Wasting your time with things I find interesting, amusing, or enraging. Reinke does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations

Hoping none of you minds this but I received the below email today and thought you might find it interesting. Also you can download a great brochure on how the new health care law affects seniors here:

Thank you and share this message with anyone else you think would like to learn the facts.

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Dear Supporter:

The Republicans in Congress are attacking the new health care law and their key strategy is to lie about it.[1] How do we fight back? By telling the truth about the concrete ways the new law improves people’s lives.

Yesterday thousands of seniors gathered with President Obama to participate in a national tele-townhall in Wheaton, Maryland to combat the fraud and misinformation being spread about health reform.[2]

Click here to forward this email to 5 people you know so they can learn the facts.

The truth is that the new law strengthens the financial health of Medicare and reduces unwarranted subsidies that have lined the pockets of insurance company CEOs and Wall Street big wigs. The truth is that it gives seniors more control over their health care and they will save thousands of dollars by closing the Medicare “donut hole,” including the $250 rebate checks mailed this month.[3]

Click here to download a great fact sheet about closing the prescription drug coverage gap and to send it to 5 people you know.

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “By and Large” group.

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Dear XXXXXX,

At the risk of infuriating you and injecting politics in our relatively sedate Yahoo Group, I’d like to respond to the “Obamacare” facing all of us.

The crap that has passed as “law” is imho immoral, ineffective, and inefficient.

Let me be very specific!

(1) Immoral because it:

(1a) Moves the country further from the free market in healthcare. Markets allow humans to cooperate peacefully operating in their own best interest. It’s immoral to institute Socialism in “Medical Care”. I should pay for my needs as you should for you. It’s not fair to force me to pay for yours at the detriment of my needs.

(1b) It further disconnects the consumer from the decision. As we learned in Economics class, medical care is an excellent example of an inelastic demand curve. Demand is nearly infinite at all prices. So it must be “rationed”. For all it’s flaws, price (or cost) is an excellent damper on demand. One can decry the fact that millionaires get better health care than paupers, but that’s life. And even in the worker’s paradise of the USSR or China that is still true.

(1c) Abortion! It forces the pro-life taxpayer like me to fund a morally abhorrent practice of killing babies. There is no moral basis for the State to have any role in killing its citizens. In fact, the DoI says “All men have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and property”. (I like the early Jeffersonian formulation better.) Following that line, the Gooferment has a small role in ensuring the protection of babies after conception and a larger role in protecting them as they get more mature. We never decided when that inalienable right inures.

(1d) Obamacare is immoral because it is knowingly built on several lies. A deliberate deception of the People was perpetrated in the scope, cost, and impact. Scope in that the crafters knew that this was a fundamental change and covered it up with “you can keep your insurance”, “you can keep your doc”, and “business as usual”. They know this is NOT true. Cost was papered over with phony estimates that they knew were not true and they know that political estimates are always off by a factor of 10 to 100. Impact in they knew there would be rationing of care for seniors as in Britain and Canada with NICE panels, reducing Medicare by 500M$ while the number of insured increases by a third, and the Doctor fix would NEVER be passed later. Never mind that the taxes start before benefits. Taxes go for ten years and benefits for five. Start up hides the true cost.

(1e) It’s immoral because like “Social Security” it will be impossible to repeal. We can’t go back when The People recognize it is a mistake. Once people begin to plan it into their lives, it can not be ripped out. There’s no going back. And, even today, the invisible hand of the marketplace is adapting: Employers are planning to drop benefits; Employers are delaying hiring because of uncertainty; People are trying to figure out how their health will change; Doctors are planing retirement; and Student are taking other career choices.

(2) Obamacare is ineffective.

(2a) What is it? Is it about “health”, “heath care”, “health care insurance”, “health care financing”, “health care accessibility”, or something else. One sign of ineffectiveness is when folks can’t define what they are doing and why. The debate on this as well as the labeling shifted all over the lot as politicians sought to whizz one by. It’s ineffective because depending upon what the objective being considered, it by the proponent’s own argument does NOT accomplish it. Let’s take a few! “Lower costs”, no. “Cover everyone”, no. “Single payer”, no. “Reign in insurers”, no. And, on and on.

(2b) Economists have long pointed out that the disconnect between the consumer and the cost leads to bad behavior. Medicare is a classic example. People get “care” without regard to cost. Think old folks would be buying all those “Hover-rounds” if they were footing the bill? We grew up in the old free market. My Mom scrutinized the bill for my appendix operation that she had to pay. She had insurance. But she paid and was reimbursed 80%. My wife was in the hospital for 35 days to the tune of a million bucks. The bill was a foot thick. We had two “insurances” so we didn’t even have to look at it. The old “insurance system” was bad; this will be worse. (It’s not “one old system” since it silently morphs, but for sake of argument let’s consider it one “old” versus “new”.)

(2c) Obamacare does NOTHING to even begin to measure effectiveness. It doesn’t even pretend to try to. How much does “medical care” improve our lives and how will we as a nation measure it. Live births, infant mortality, quality of life, quantity of life. It’s ineffective because we don’t know what effect will look like.

(2d) Obamacare suffers from what the Austrian School of Economics identifies as the “lack of a market”. Like tax policy, it very nebulous how much will “we” spend on Obamacare. The Socialists don’t have market costs to determine how much is enough. If I earn 10K$, 100K$, or 1M$, I know I can’t afford a 10M$ medical bill without help. Each year, there will be a political battle to fund Obamacare. How much is enough? Who gets screwed? What will we cover? How do we cut costs? All because we don’t have individuals deciding how much can I afford, how much do I want to pay, and what are my alternatives. It’s Socialisms unsolvable problems because everything becomes political and different “sides” fight over “the commons”. Politicans love it because they are in the driver’s seat. Essential to this fight.

(3) Obamacare is inefficient!

(3a) It introduces some 300 gooferment entities into healthcare. That’s just what’s on the drawing board. Someone has to pay for all of that. Who? Yup, the taxpayer. And, those dollars won’t go to healing people.

(3b) It replicates the VA Healthcare System, Native American Indian System, Medicaid Heathcare System, and (my personal favorite) the Medicare Healthcare System. These are all models of efficiency! Really, they are perfect models of what we can expect from Obamacare. Fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicare is estimated by the Gooferment itself to be a third to a half of all money spent. Private estimates are higher.

(3c) Massachusetts’ Healthcare System is Obamacare in microcosm. It is already plagues with cost, coverage, delivery, and administrative problems. In the beginning years.

(3d) England, Canada, and most places that have some version of Obamacare are font of illustration of what the problems are. My personal favorite example is the 24 hour MRI billboard at Niagara Falls; for Canadians seeking a life saving MRI before it’s too late. Did you know that a map of GE’s fastest most-expensive newest MRI machines are all along the Canadian border; why is that?

(3e) Obamacare muddies the line between participant and referee. In pre-Obamacare days, “The Serf” (insured) fought with “The Nobel” (insurer) over coverage and could appeal to “The King” (the government) for relief. When in Obamacare, and the gooferment death panel denies you some needed or life-saving medical miracle, to who will you appeal? The Gooferment’s Courts? You’ll die before you get help. But then that is the idea. It’s eugenics all over again. Medical care for those who serve the State. Everyone else can go to hell.

(3f) It takes over charity. It dehumanizes society. It makes the gooferment the arbiter of who lives and die.

Sorry but this fat old white guy injineer thinks that Obamacare is a disaster of our own causing. There ain’t no such thing as free lunch.

I am passionately involved in this because my wife needs her medical care to stay alive for as long as she can. Obamacare, when it rations care, will deliberately deprive her of her life. Silently, in a very academic fashion, it will decide who is worth saving based on “adjusted quality years” (i.e., can you still work and pay taxes or are you collecting Social Security). It’s not going to be pretty. And this may just start the revolution that these Socialists want. They may not be happy with the outcome. Remember what happened in France as the “upper class” went to the guillotine?

Pf-reinke-nstein

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I think the revolution will come. The question is: “Is it too late?”.

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I left out about the Corn Husker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, and the various and sundry backroom deals to buy the votes to pass it.

I left out about how it elevates “The King” Gooferment to new levels of power.

I left out how Unconstitutional it is and how right Lysander Spooner was.

I left out how the elite (i.e., the Politicians and Bureaucrats) excluded themselves.

I left out how pissed I am at the whole damned thing! Where’s my pitchfork? Where’s the tar ‘n’ feathers? Where’s the torches? Where’s the Bastille?